GWYNNE DYER: Why peace doesn't last long in Ethiopia

Advertisement 1 This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Breadcrumb Trail Links HomeAtlantic CanadaCape BretonCape Breton OpinionNewfoundland & LabradorNewfoundland And Labrador OpinionOpinionPrince Edward Island GWYNNE DYER: Why peace doesn't last long in Ethiopia Ethiopia's prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, may have gotten a Peace Prize, but peace doesn't last long in the country Author of the article: By Gwynne Dyer Published Sep 24, 2026 Last updated 33 minutes ago 4 minute read Gwynne Dyer Handout Article content Another October is coming up, and still the Nobel Peace Prize Committee refuses to give Donald Trump his Prize. They even gave one to Barack Obama, who was Black and a Democrat and had only been in office for 20 minutes. Article content Meanwhile, they ignore a man truly worthy of the Prize, a man who ended eight wars last year alone. (He said so himself.) Article content Article content Unfortunately, the Prize Committee has a long record of backing the wrong person. Article content Article content They gave it to Aung Sang Suu Kyi of Myanmar, who defended the Rohingya genocide: “I don’t think there is ethnic cleansing going on,” she said. Article content They gave it to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who ordered the secret carpet-bombing of Cambodia: “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” Article content And in 2019, they gave it to Abiy Ahmed, then and still today the prime minister of Ethiopia. He promised to break the cycle of internal wars that have devastated the country since the vicious tyranny of the Marxist ‘Derg’ regime was overthrown in 1991, and probably that really was his original intention. It just hasn’t worked out that way. Article content Why is Ethiopia at war? Article content Ethiopia has the second-biggest population in Africa (140 million people), and there are at least 10 ethnic groups with more than a million people. It was a real African empire, never colonized for long by any European power, but that means that every other one of those groups was conquered at some point in the past by the ruling imperial group, the Amharas. Article content Article content All of the larger sub-Saharan countries of Africa have many ethnic groups, but all the others had a foreign conqueror to unite against. Ethiopia never had that, so it’s a much harder country to govern. Article content Read More GWYNNE DYER: Tigray is being brutally…